Opinion: Things are changing, and have changed in Chesterfield town centre - but we can all move forward together

It’s hard not to admire the bravery it takes to set up your own business, to keep on keeping on despite the economic climate.

Yes, shopping habits are changing with online buying. Yes, people have less to spend right now.

Yes, everything seems to be in catch-up post-pandemic.

Life feels like a bad dance of half-step out of time with the partner you’re trying to keep up with.

Two different songs playing at the same time.

This clash of music is very loud with comments made on the Derbyshire Times Facebook feed. People saying town centres are dying. People saying it’s the council’s fault.

People saying it’s because there’s too many charity shops, too many eateries, too many empty spaces.

And yet, hearing what the majority of shop owners and traders sing, this noise of messy jazz becomes a simple ballad. Come into town, don’t stay away and dismiss. Come in and meet your friends, have a coffee and connect. Come see what’s here, don’t focus on the empty spaces.

And my own personal opinion: charity shops are great. Affordable finds recycled: your coins going to a cause that could change someone’s life for the better. And a change for the better, in some part, is with you, with all of us.

It’s no accident that post-war art and literature is littered with something called ennui: a weird word for a weird feeling of dislocation and uncertainty.

It grows from that passage of change, seeded from dramas out of our control, that unknowingness of where and when the flowers will show.

Here’s what I’ve seen in the last six months. Lydia, a lady who runs her own successful vintage clothes shop, who sees the post-war wisdom in ‘make do and mend’. Beck, who runs his own successful record shop, a leak in his roof destroying part of his stock, his friends coming together to help him put things back together.

Amanda, who runs a successful communal craft hub, that keeps a community connected with making. Em, a working mum who runs a successful jewellery and clothes shop, her winning philosophy of don’t complain, it’s up to you to sort it. Laura-Jo and Adam, who also run a successful jewellery shop, an active sparkle in the community of indie shop owners, a gem of yes we can.

David and Anne, who run an ages-long successful DIY shop, the do it yourself a community aspect of do it together. And there’s more.

These voices when put into a chorus sing the same song: together. Things are changing, and have changed. We can’t help that. But what we can help is how we adapt. Communication: be it MPs, council, landlords, shop owners, traders, shoppers, all of us. Less shouting, more conversation. Less negativity, more listening.

And you? You live here, you’re part of it. Evolution is a forward motion. Together.